by Marko Kloos
There’s some low grumbling in the room at this directive. I am used to the weight of my M109 in its holster on my right thigh. It has been my constant companion both on duty and on leave. More than once, I’ve faced a threat with nothing but that pistol, and even if its utility against Lankies is highly questionable, it always made me feel a little more in control of my own fate.
Captain Rolson behind me raises a hand and clears his throat.
“What if we have to abandon ship, sir?”
“The escape pods on Ottawa all have arms lockers with small arms and ammunition for emergencies,” the XO says. “The lockers have electronic access control that won’t release the weapons until the computer detects that the pod has been launched.”
The murmurs of discontent subside only a little. The XO shakes his head at us with a frown.
“I understand that you all got used to being armed at all times. That made sense when we were still at war with the SRA and could expect boarding actions. But we are geared to fight Lankies now. And this is a ship with an international crew. Some of the Eurocorps people don’t have the same experience with hand weapons that we have gained over the years. This is a firm safety rule from upstairs, and I will enforce the hell out of it, so don’t give me a reason to come down on you. When this briefing is over, you will turn in your sidearms at the flight deck armory. Nobody but SP on duty carries a loaded weapon shipboard. That’s an order from the CO, not a debate item.”
The XO shifts his gaze back to the screen of his PDP. The screen behind him changes to a spinning diagram of the ship, with vital parts shown in cross-section.
“I know none of you are familiar with this class because nobody is until they come aboard. The Avenger-class battlecarrier is a joint project between the NAC, the European Union, and the SRA. We pooled our know-how from Agincourt and Arkhangelsk with the Euros, and this is what they came up with. Half a million tons of one-g weight, with the spacecraft capacity of a Navigator-class supercarrier and more antiship firepower than Archie or Aggie.”
“Half a million tons,” Lieutenant Brown repeats next to me, and I let out a low whistle. Archie and Aggie were by far the biggest ships in the Fleet when they were built almost four years ago, and the ship we’re on right now has as much laminate steel in it as both battleships put together.
“We have an augmented carrier air group on board,” the XO continues. “Four strike squadrons, two assault transport squadrons, a recon squadron, and a support squadron. One hundred and ten spacecraft in total. Our troop complement is one full-strength regiment of SI. We also carry sixty-four Hades-C nuclear missiles, and six Orions.”
“Excuse me, sir,” someone behind me interjects. “Don’t those weigh fifteen thousand tons each?”
“Not the new ones,” the XO says. He changes the display to show one of the box launchers mounted on the ventral side of the ship. “These are Orion IIIs. Same principle, but a quarter the weight. Shorter range, of course, and they don’t hit as hard as the originals, but we can carry half a dozen with us in those box launchers, three per side. The ordnance eggheads say that they’re powerful enough to crack a seed ship hull open so we can follow up with precision nukes and blow the bastards up from the inside.” He pauses and grins without humor.
“Of course, we have a pretty solid plan B, too.”
He spins the diagram until we see the ventral side of the ship—engines at the rear, docking locks for the drop ships amidships, several batteries of rail guns mounted in single turrets—and a long armored bulge that extends from the middle of the ship all the way to the bottom of the bow section. When the XO rotates the animation, we see two muzzles poking out from the bow, spaced maybe twenty meters apart near the centerline. I’ve seen a muzzle like that underneath Agincourt and Arkhangelsk. Where the old battleships had one particle cannon each, this ship has two of them, mounted beside the longitudinal axis, and they look a great deal bigger than the ones on Aggie and Archie.
“There’s plan B,” the lieutenant colonel continues. “The Orions are for standoff range. These are for knife fighting. Double the range of the old models, and twenty percent more energy output. And because we have two of them, we also have double the rate of fire. Each gun has its own reactor dedicated to it, so we can fire the Alpha mount while the Bravo mount recharges, and vice versa.”
I remember the troublesome particle cannon mount on Agincourt, which eventually contributed to her loss in battle above Mars. It looks like they’ve learned their lessons about the peak power draw of those cannons. The reactor capacity of this ship must be immense if they can dedicate two fusion reactors just to the main armament.
“I know most of you are veterans of Mars. Some of you were at the Battle of Earth. You know how it feels when there’s a Lanky seed ship in weapons range. But the days of running from them are over. I am not even slightly afraid to go up against a Lanky unit in this ship. We have armor plating that resists their weapons, and we have the firepower to kill their seed ships. We’ve halted their advance. And now it’s time to push them back.”
I’ve heard the rah-rah motivational baloney a thousand times before, usually right before a mission where everything goes to flaming shit in a hurry, but as the XO goes through the general capabilities and features of the Avenger-class ships, I can’t help but be impressed. The Euros shelled out a lot of money to aid in the construction of these six ships, and they are stuffed with top-flight technology from bow to stern. But I also know that the Eurocorps has little off-Earth warfighting experience. They don’t have colonies outside the solar system, so they’ve not had to go into battle against the Lankies until just recently. It feels good to think we have the tools to meet the Lankies on equal footing, but as I look around in the briefing room, where some of the chairs are still covered in plastic and the paint on the bulkhead looks like it dried just yesterday, I am keenly aware that I’m about to ride into battle on a half-million-ton experiment. If I’ve learned anything useful at all in nearly nine years of service, it’s that the battlefield is not a great environment to work the bugs out of your gear.
When the briefing is over, I grudgingly do as ordered and go down to the armory on the flight deck level to turn in my pistol and the two spare magazines I’ve been carrying on my person for years now. Walking back up to my stateroom, it feels strange not to have the familiar weight of the M109 in its retention holster on my upper thigh. It’s amazing how quickly a two-pound piece of polymer and steel can become part of you. After a few minutes without a sidearm, I already miss the stupid thing, even if it was a pain in the ass sometimes, clunking into chairs and hatch frames all the time.
Back in my stateroom, I continue unpacking my personal gear. At the bottom of my bag, there’s a small biometric hand safe just like the one I gave Chief Kopka a few years back for safekeeping. I open the lock with my fingerprint. Inside, there’s an antique pistol, issued to the US predecessor of the NAC Defense Corps. It’s an M17, chambered in a now-obsolete cartridge. Its polymer frame is scuffed and worn, the original finish of the metal slide and barrel have faded from phosphate black to light gray, and it’s about twice as heavy as a modern service pistol and useless against battle armor. But I know from experience during my eighteen months with the Lazarus Brigades that when you shoot someone with this pistol, they will promptly fall down and die. I got this weapon as a parting gift when I left the Brigades a year and a half ago, and I’m not turning this one into the armory to get melted down.
The safe is just big enough for the gun, two spare magazines, and a fifty-round box of that obsolete nine-millimeter ammunition. I close the safe, and the lock activates itself again with a soft click.
It’s not really insubordination, I tell myself as I store the little hand safe in my locker’s valuables compartment. I did turn in the issued pistol as ordered, after all, and I won’t carry the old gun out in the open. But there is absolutely no way I’ll go into battle on an untested ship with an untested crew without fuss-free access
to a weapon. When the Combat Stations alert blares and everyone around you loses their head, it’s too late to be standing in line at the armory to sign out your pistol.
CHAPTER 8
AN UNPLEASANT REUNION
Four days after I report to Ottawa, the ship leaves the anchorage for its shakedown cruise to Fleet Base Titan, over a billion kilometers and a six-week journey away. I do my regular observance of Earth on the viewscreen of the terminal in my stateroom, but most of my view is obscured by the bulk of Luna, and I notice that our departure vector keeps the moon between us and Earth until our home planet is just a muddy green-gray dot in the distance.
Ottawa is so different from any of the ships I’ve served on that I almost feel like a brand-new nugget on my first deployment. The ship is so large that it has half a dozen officer’s wardrooms spread out over the kilometer-long hull and its twenty-odd decks. It’s not just that everything is new and works as it should. There’s so much open space in the common areas that it feels like a shore-based building, not a warship. Space is always at a premium on Fleet ships, so all this elbow room feels decadent and a little wasteful. But I can’t say I dislike being able to stretch out a bit.
My duty station is the STT office in the SOCOM section of the executive deck, which has both an officer wardroom and an enlisted mess within twenty frames of my office. But whenever I can, I duck down to the officer’s wardroom on the flight deck level, where the pilots and flight-ops officers eat their meals. It’s less formal than the executive-level wardroom—pilots wear their flight suits instead of having to dress in the uniform of the day just to grab a meal—and the atmosphere is more casual. Most importantly, it’s where Halley usually eats, and we have a bit of leeway to synchronize our lunches.
“How do you like the new monkey suit?” Halley asks between two bites of salad. The officer’s wardroom down here is buffet-style, and I’ve not seen such a variety of fresh greens, fruit, and real meat and chicken since the early days of our service careers.
I look down at the blue-and-teal ensemble I am wearing.
“Honestly? It’s pretty comfortable. And you can’t get it to wrinkle. But I still think it doesn’t look very martial.”
“Yeah, they do look a bit like leisure wear. The flight deck crews call them blueberries.”
“New uniforms. No sidearms. A brand-new ship that has everyone checking deck layouts on their PDPs. And speaking of PDPs—have they made you trade yours up yet?”
“Haven’t had the time yet,” Halley says.
I reach into the leg pocket of my new uniform trousers and pull out my PDP. Then I place it on the table between us. Halley picks it up and turns it around in her hand. Where the old PDPs were built for ruggedness, with thick shockproof polymer shells, the new one looks like it’ll break in half the first time I drop it on the deck by accident. It’s a transparent piece of whatever super-ionized heavy-duty glass they use for handheld screens right now, and the glass slab is surrounded by a thin metal frame.
“This weighs absolutely nothing,” Halley says. “A mess fork is heavier than that thing.”
“Too much new shit, all at once. I’m used to my old crap. At least I could work everything without having to think about it. Now I can’t do even basic stuff without reading a tutorial first. It fucks up my work flow.”
“Cry me a river,” Halley says. “I’m on my seventh drop ship–type rating in as many years. At least you can’t kill yourself by hitting the wrong button on your PDP.”
“A fair point,” I concede.
“Besides, not all changes are bad. Did you find out about the alcohol yet?”
“What alcohol?” I ask. Fleet ships are dry underway by policy except for special occasions. When a cruise exceeds six weeks and becomes an official deep-space deployment, crew members are allocated two bottles of beer, but that’s the extent of alcohol consumption on NAC warships away from the dock.
“The RecFacs have bars. We’re allowed one drink a day. They scan your tag to make sure you don’t double-dip. And you can’t get a drink if you’re up for watch rotation within six hours. But yeah. One real drink per day. And it’s not even that fizzy soy shit.”
“Why are you just now telling me this?” I ask. “I missed four drinks already.”
“I just found out about it today from one of the crew chiefs. Been too busy to check out the RecFac.”
“Real booze on a Fleet ship. That’s a drastic change I can live with.”
“They say it’s because of the Euros on the crew. Apparently, they have that policy on their own ships, and we adopted it. To keep the allies happy.”
“It’ll keep our guys happy, too,” I say. “They’ll mutiny when they go back to a regular NAC boat with a dry-ship policy.”
The officer wardroom doesn’t look as cozy as Chief Kopka’s restaurant, but it’s a far cry from the ones on the other Fleet ships. There are booths all around the perimeter of the compartment and tables and chairs set up in rows in the middle, spaced apart far enough that everyone has room to move. The wardroom booths and tables are about half-full with officers eating their lunches. Most of them are in flight suits, but there are a few officers in blueberry uniforms. Looking around, I see mostly NAC patches on the uniforms, but there are a few Eurocorps officers in the mix. I see a German flag, a Swedish one, a Union Jack, and a French flag.
“Do you have any Euro pilots in your squadron?” I ask Halley.
“No ship commanders,” she says. “None of them are rated on our birds. But flight ops has three Euro observers.”
Halley has been different since we came aboard Ottawa. I haven’t had many opportunities to see her—she’s in Pilot Country, my duty station is almost at the other end of the ship, and the Fleet doesn’t allow joint berthing for married couples on warships. But whenever we do have meals together, she’s been in a good mood—confident, happy, and content. I never fully realized how much the shorebound training duty was wearing on her all these years. Seeing her in her element and knowing that we’re on the same command again has improved my mood greatly as well, even though we’re working five hundred meters apart and have a quarter million tons of alloy and titanium bulkheads between us.
I take another bite of my mashed potatoes and look over Halley’s shoulder at some newcomers stepping through the hatch of the officer’s wardroom, and my good mood instantly evaporates. One of the pilots walking in looks unpleasantly familiar. It’s a face I haven’t seen in three years, one that I hoped never to see again except in a MilNet message about lengthy prison sentences at Leavenworth.
“You have got to be joking,” I say and put down my fork.
Halley turns around to follow my gaze. Then she mutters an obscenity under her breath.
The pilot, who is now making his way to the buffet line to pick up a tray, is a Shrike jock. I don’t have to read his name tag to know that it says “BEALS.” He was part of the renegade fleet that ran off to Arcadia. I know him because he was behind the stick of a Shrike that almost shot down the Blackfly drop ship with my entire platoon in it. Only Halley’s last-second intervention saved me and thirty-six SI troopers from becoming a smoking hole in the ground on that moon. Halley shot his ship out of the sky, but he ejected and became our prisoner. To this day, I don’t think he knows that he was about half a second and five pounds of trigger-finger pressure away from getting his brains blown out by Master Sergeant Fallon. Seeing him standing in the chow line, loading up his tray with food, I find myself wishing I hadn’t countermanded my order and stopped Sergeant Fallon at the last moment.
“Son of a bitch,” I say. “I was hoping that bastard was pounding rocks somewhere.”
“That amnesty,” Halley replies. “Thank our president.”
After Arcadia, the new NAC leadership issued a general amnesty for almost all military personnel who were part of the renegade fleet. We couldn’t afford to lose that many trained specialists right before Mars, and I suppose they didn’t want to give a few thousand w
eapon-trained people a reason for a major grudge. Only the old administration, the civilian leadership who gave the orders, ended up on trial, and they all went to prison for high treason. But people like this Shrike pilot got a free pass, even if their actions resulted in the deaths of legitimate NAC troops—my troops.
I shove my meal tray toward the middle of the table and get out of my chair.
“I’ll be right back,” I say to Halley. “Gonna go for some dessert.”
“Andrew,” she says, but I disregard the warning in her voice. I step around the table and walk over to the buffet line.
Captain Beals sees my approach out of the corner of his eye, but he barely has time to start turning toward me. I slap the meal tray out of his hand from below, and it flips up, bounces off the corner of the buffet counter, and clatters to the floor, spraying mashed potatoes and fried chicken everywhere. The captain flinches and takes a reflexive step backwards.
“Hello again,” I say. “Remember me?”
Beals’s expression goes from surprise to anger to wariness in the span of two or three seconds. All around us, the conversations in the wardroom cease.
“Yeah,” he says. “I do.” He flicks some mashed potato blobs off his flight suit. “The lieutenant with the psychopathic master sergeant.”
“I’m glad you remember. Because I remember the body bags we brought home. Thanks to you and your flyboy friends.”
There’s anger flaring up behind the captain’s eyes now, and his jaw muscles flex.
“You started the shooting. At the airfield that you ambushed. We filled our own share of body bags. Don’t get all righteous with me, Captain.”
“Only, what we did was legal. What you did was treason. And we just broke your Shrikes. Your patrol started killing people. The first KIA was ours.”